[mythtv] on-the-fly transcoding

[Clemens Fruhwirth]

I have a number of underpowered clients attached to mythtv. They are
only capable of displaying RTjpeg in realtime. mpeg4 demands simply too
much. 

I would like to see an on-the-fly transcoding feature in mythtv. I have
had a small look at the myth protocol and noticed that filetransfer
commands are used to stream stuff to the clients. I would assume that it
is neccessary to hook into those commands and provide access to a
virtual file with virtual offsets that is generated on the fly via
transcoding. In addition, I'm not sure how skipping forward/backward
works. I heard some strange rumours that mythtv stores seek offsets in a
mysql table. Are they directly fetched by the client or are they used by
mythbackend?

What code has to be modified that transcoding like this will work. I'm
sorry for this unspecific question, but I rather ask the core developers
before touch stuff, so I can estimate for me if it's worth the time to
add such a feature. Judging from mythtranscode this seems doable but who
knows..

This feature is also wanted by the mvpmc folks. In their case, they want
to transcode to mpeg2 on-the-fly. 

Regards, Clemens
-- 
Fruhwirth Clemens - http://clemens.endorphin.org 
for robots: sp4mtrap at endorphin.org